


It's not what time steals, but what it leaves behind

by CallmeIsmail



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alpha/Omega, Body Horror, Body Modification, Bottom Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Children, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hermaphrodites, Historical, Historical Figures, I'll talk better about it in the story, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Immortality, Invented by none other than me, Kidnapping, Knotting, M/M, Male Lactation, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Miscarriage, Mpreg, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Joe|Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Omega genitalia described, Oral Knotting, Oral Sex, Original Character Death(s), Sex, Slice of Life, khuntha (the arabic definition of a hermaphrodite)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:42:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25713748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallmeIsmail/pseuds/CallmeIsmail
Summary: It is only later, when they’re both spent and sated and many days of lovemaking have passed - between the woods, into the sea, in the midst of the fennel fields and high above the cliffs of this blessed island – when Yusuf is resting his head over Niccolò’s chest and he’s tracing pattern in bewteen his hairs with one of his fingers that Niccolò finally asks him about the thing between his testicles.Yusuf looks at him with his brows furrowed, confused, and asks him what he means.So they start talking, spiritedly, and Yusuf brusquely detaches from him as it soon becomes pretty clear that this man Niccolò has killed so many times, this man that is now his lover, is not really a man, and that he thought that Niccolò knew.My take on an omegaverse AU of The Old Guard... A story of Nicky and Joe through the ages, of everytime they faced a heat before they met with Andromache and Quynh... A story of how immortality only enhances the struggle of an omegaverse couple.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 163





	It's not what time steals, but what it leaves behind

**Author's Note:**

> Whew, I finally finished this! It took me almost two weeks but at least now it's here.
> 
> As the summary says, this is my take on an omegaverse AU of the Old Guard, focusing - of course - on my two favourite immortal husbands Nicky and Joe, Joe being the omega.
> 
> Kudos and comments, as well as feedback, are always appreciated. Please see the end chapters for translations, etc.
> 
> With that out of the way, please enjoy!

The first time they know each other, Niccolò almost doesn't even notice it.

They're in Malta, one of the first of the many times they would be here, manic with the knowledge of finally having done something good – something greater than themselves – as frankish usurpers, rapists and marauders fled the isle chased by their swords; the year is lost, like many of his memories, to the whims of a perpetual thirty year old mind, strong enough to maintain conscience, but not powerful enough to store a quantity of echoes and impressions of a millennial life beyond any human capacity.

They’re kissing, tongue dancing with tongue, touching each other, grinding against one another, removing their clothes (first their bracelets, their chestpieces, their chain mail and at last, their soft cotton shirts) until finally – may God have mercy on them - the only feature to divide them to remain is the carnal shell of their immortal bodies.

Yusuf is on top of him, sitting on his lap, kissing him with an ardor worthy of his feiry soul as his smile and his watery black eyes fill with such a sentiment that Niccolò can’t help the strain he feels upon the delicate joints of his heart.

It feels perfect.

Niccolò’s back is being rocked by the waves over the gentle surface of the Maltese seahore’s moss-refined stones, the smell of crustacean and the clouds above them heavy with the promise of a tempest a vivid reminder of his own homeland, when his hands start to roam back and forth Yusuf’s waist, when his finger reaches the crack of his back and his hole, toying with its rim, when he drags both of his hands back to the front and starts jerking the older man’s hard member – occasionally resting his pinkie over Yusuf’s slit – and fondle his smooth testicles.

That’s when Niccolò finally takes notices of the presence of another crack in bewteen the said pair of balls.

It’s small, narrow, almost as narrow as Marta’s, the girl with the busted lips and short black hair that was Niccolò’s first time – the twelve year old that his fellow friends always said would soon become a whore like her mother and whose vulva was so tight, its pink lips so thin, that her and Niccolò only managed to fondle each other, as the possibility of penetration (even of one finger) had clearly been out of the question; a scenario that had much to do in similarity with his current situation with Yusuf.

As curious as he’s always been, though, Niccolò busies his right hand with the pinching and teasing of Yusuf’s nipples, earning from him the sweet reward of o a moan, while his other hand massages through the lips of a vulva that – now that he looks better at it – seems to be encasing Yusuf’s cut cock as well as his balls, until he can feel his little finger dip into what seems to be the trenches of a very small hole that the former priest proceeds to plunge into.

It’s tight, tighter than everything Niccolò’s ever experienced, more unyielding than his own pucker.

For a while they stay like that, Niccolò’s lover overwhelmed with sensation and the crusader filled with genuine curiosity as his finger first goes back and forth inside the newly found hole and then tries to twist it in between the inner walls.

Yusuf hisses then, clenches his teeth, and Niccolò takes it as his cue to leave his lover’s secrecies alone; he instead engulfs Yusuf’s left bud with his lips, licks its tip, scrapes at its areola with his teeth and sucks hard as Yusuf himself puts a hand between them and jerks the both of them off to completion, to sheer bliss.

And Niccolò’s stupefaction blends into the ocean waves much like the seed of the two men mixes up with the sea foam.

It is only later, when they’re both spent and sated and many days of lovemaking have passed - between the woods, into the sea, in the midst of the fennel fields and high above the cliffs of this blessed island – when Yusuf is resting his head over Niccolò’s chest and he’s tracing pattern in bewteen his hair with one of his fingers that Niccolò finally manages to ask him about the thing hidden in between his testicles.

Yusuf looks at him with his brows furrowed, seemingly confused, and asks him what he means.

So they start talking, spiritedly, and Yusuf brusquely detaches from him as it soon becomes pretty clear that this man Niccolò has killed so many times, this man that is now his lover, is not really a man, and that he thought that Niccolò knew.

Yusuf’s cheeks bloom with red embarassment, his deer-like eyes fill with tears and, rapture by sudden shame, he shifts to the corner of their makeshift bed and brings the silken fabric over himself, using their covers as a shield between himself and Niccolò.

“I thought you knew. I thought you knew”, he keeps repeating in arabic and it takes Niccolò all of the effort of his broken maghrebi to convince the man - the whatever Yusuf is – that everything is fine, that Niccolò’s love for him has not faltered one bit, that he just didn’t expect it, that he had never seen something like this in his life, that he just wants to understand.

Yusuf looks even more puzzled then, asks him if he has really never met a _khuntha_ before (how is it possible, didn’t he live in a big city, were there no Maladhs in Genoa?), a ‘hermaphrodite’ as the peoples of Italy called them, an _omega_ as wealthy British physicians at the service of Her Majesty Queen Victoria would later on dictate as the correct terminology to distinguish these individuals’ specific peculiarity from that of the others belonging to the intersexual spectrum.

And Niccolò’s expression might have betrayed his perplexity then because as a sigh of relief leaves Yusuf’s mouth and the accumulated tension makes him combust into a copious cry, Niccolò’s beloved goes back to addressing him in a worrisome pastiche of their respective native tongues.

“Come faremo – come faremo mai quando verrà _almuzahara_?”

And in front of such strife Niccolò can’t even muster the idea of confessing to Yusuf that he has no idea what he means by the ‘blossoming’.

***

He understands it sooner than later, five years from their first love encounter, when they’re travelling under the disguise of merchants – sometimes of beggar veterans – around the coast of the French Riviera, in Provence, in search of the two huntresses acolytes of Diana that fill their every dream with spectacles of war, love-making and broken limbs reviving back to life.

Niccolò’s beloved - Iusef as the people here have it easier to call him - camouflaged as his servant (a simple assumption that had first angered Niccolò but that had soon proven to be a perfect coverage for their sleeping arrangements), is picking fresh fish for their dinner when his ‘water’ first breaks in the middle of the Canua – Cannes, as the locals called it - market.

Niccolò is just a few feet away from him, haggling spiritedly the price of a passage on a merchant vessel directed to Corsica with its captain - a brazen, blonde young man - when his eyes briefly wander to the shape of his beloved, stiff as a wooden board, his bodily discomfort concealed for the most part under his grey cloak, and immediately realizes that something is wrong.

Of course, he doesn’t know from the beginning what it is about but Niccolò has always had a predisposition to intuition, so he excuses himself from the boy – he wasn’t listening anyway, too entertained by the task of mocking his genoese accent – and goes over to Yusuf, puts a hand on his shoulder and the shiver that he feels running through his lover’s spine suddenly reminds Niccolò of the same trembling that had excited Yusuf’s form when the younger man had touched the lips in the middle of his testicles.

“We must leave”, Yusuf apologetically says to the fish vendor, who looks more than a little bit puzzled, before making a hasty retreat, bringing his lover with him.

As soon as they get back to their small little apartment, Yusuf rids himself of his cloak, lifts his tunic and pulls down his trousers so that Niccolò’s eyes may wander back to the middle of his testicles - reduced a bit in size since the previous night, as they seem to have parted in order for his vulva to get larger - from which lips and hole the italian realizes emerges a torrent of thick, transparent fluid, similar in consistency to milk, that trickles down his lover’s thighs and legs.

“Now we cannot take off.” Yusuf laments as Niccolò’s concentration has evolved into tactile exploration, as he runs his hand up and down the other immortal’slick thighs, taking in the wonderful scent of the newly released secretions.

He puts his head to Yusuf’s pelvis, runs his nose in between Yusuf’s curly, sticky black hairs and uses his tongue to clean the mess that these leakages left him with – and _oh_ , it’s so wonderfully sweet - all the while listening to his man’s whines and keens, to the words of warning uttered in between gasps of pleasure that inform him that this is nothing but the start; that soon Yusuf will be incapable of coherent thought as the cramps of the _taedil_ \- the ‘adjustments’ - and his genitalia’s shape-shifting will leave him exhausted and vulnerable before he’ll heat. That Niccolò must look for an apothecary, if they truly are to carry on with their quest, because he shan’t pass the next month keening and begging for cock at any God-given moment and, truly, is Niccolò even listening to him? Does he have any idea of what’s going on?

And no, Niccolò is not listening to him, nor does he grasp the scope of what’s going on, but this kind of state seems to have become an everyday reality for him, since the day a scimitar cut through his middle and the blackness of death turned into a momentary sea of sleep more than a hundred years ago.

Now he is too focused on exploring with his tongue Yusuf’s bodily changes to worry about their meaning. He’s too preoccupied with savoring the thick wetness and the velvety surfaces of his vulva, too entrenched with his beloved’s small, timid hole to realize that it’s just a few instants before Yusuf is coming, not from his penis – that still stands hard and erect – but from the lips of his retreating testicles, gushing out on Niccolò’s face even more fluid.

He does as he’s told only the next day, but soon the search of an apothecary that even seems to begin to understand what Yusuf’s symptoms might be – or better yet, the manifestations that Niccolò is willing to disclose with them for fear of persecution or worse, being accused of buggery, witchcraft – proves to lead to a dead end.

As days pass and Yusuf grows increasingly more anxious and uncomfortable - his flow almost never stopping, leaving him incapable of rest – Niccolò becomes more and more embarassed with each judging forrow of the brow that every person he asks help to ( spice vendors, physicians, midwives) gives him when he tries to explain what’s happening to his attendee, not completely sure if ashamed at his people’s lack of knowledge or at his own incapacity of understanding, of explaining to them what’s happening.

He briefly entertains the idea that this must be something peculiar to Yusuf’s people -of the moslem kind - but he quickly banishes the prejudiced thought as the last person he meets (an old midwife, probably almost as old as Niccolò himself) before the end of the first week - before Yusuf’s painful spasms of the lower body start - assures him of the contrary; of a time when a malnourished boy from the outer villages had come to Canas to seek help for his little brother – plagued by a conditon much similar to that of Niccolò’ s servant – and suggests he should look for the Master Pharmacist of the Lérins because he had been the one to treat the boy.

A hermaphrodite, she believed the pious man to have called him.

And like so he sets out for the island of Saint-Honorat in the hopes of finding this all-knowing pious physicist still intact and alive, but not before managing to bid his woebegone Yusuf farewell with a promise to come back with help as soon as possible, with a plead to hold on against the pain for just a while longer.

It’s hard for him to leave for the port because Yusuf has never been as distressed as he’s seeing him now, with his eyes filled with tears, his body warming to the point that even touching him almost leaves burn marks on Niccolò’s palms and his lips beseeching him to remain, to not leave him alone as his muscles prepare and adjust to better accomodate him when the time comes.

Niccolò doesn’t understand what Yusuf means, but he tries anyhow to calm him down before his departure at dawn; he kisses his forehead and covers his naked frame – his cock still impossibly hard and seemingly unable to find release even now that it has shrunk back inside the labia surrounding it, barely allowing the tip to be out, his vulva finally regularly moist as the flow has now somehow abated – tells him that whatever will happen, they’ll go through it together, that it’ll just take one day to Saint Honorat and back and that, when he will come, he’ll be with help, with something to ease his pain a little.

They cuddle for the rest of night, until Yusuf finally manages to fall asleep after begging for forgiveness in between tears.

_I’m sorry, I thought they had stopped._

_It’s not usually this bad, I don’t know why I’m feeling so sick._

_How is it possible there is no shelter in this God forsaken city._

_Come back soon._

To be completely honest, Niccolò mostly leaves the next day because he’s afraid of what’s happening.

He knows what it’s expected of him; before the dizziness of _taedil_ – whatever that might be - hit, Yusuf had managed to paint a picture made of restless desire and never-ending sex once his body had been ready, but even though they have known each other for so long now - even though their bodies keep rejuvenating -Niccolò still can’t shake the idea from his head that he’s about to commit a terrible sin.

That he isn’t supposed to know Yusuf like this.

That this lustful flesh is not something for him to witness or savor.

But yet again, it’s a short view thought that he manages to banish from his mind once he arrives at the Abbey: not only had he taken much longer than expected – the antsy helmsman very much suspicious in his every explanation of why they couldn’t take off from the beginning of the day and had to wait long after the sun arose – but the disorientation coming from the words of the old blind man known as the Abbey’s head pharmacist told Niccolò that not only this man was unable to help him, but that he had probably never seen a hermaphrodite in all of his life.

And he had left Yusuf alone for this.

Nevertheless, the friar was a kind, gentle spirit and recollected the presence of an annotated Galenus’ volume in the library that might be of service and let Niccolò read it to him, patiently making due with the italian’s poor Latin, so that he might prepare a concoction for his friend’s illness.

Already afflicted by yet another failure, Niccolò becomes even more distressed upon realizing that the ferryman has not waited for him - as they agreed, as Niccolò paid him for – and that now that the night has drenched the sky with its blackness, he must wait for the next day.

Eventually, he’s able to take off at the first light of day, thanks to a young fisherman impatient to go home to his sisters and when he finally arrives at their shared apartments Yusuf, as well as the tidiness of their belongings, has disappeared.

Scattered books and broken lamps indicate that there’s been a fight, a brawl that Niccolò is sure Yusuf couldn’t be able to win, much less to escape from, given the state that he’s in.

And he starts to panic.

He begins to pound heavily on his neighbors’ doors, asking for an explanation, and when finally one of them wakes up and manages to try and sport a look of not-so-much- annoyance, he is quickly informed that two men had come to collect the debts that Niccolò’s _slave_ (slave! The word is spat out with such venom) had contracted with them and that when the man had refused to pay, they brought him to their employer.

“Debts, what debts?”, Niccolò yells. “Iusef has never gambled in all of his life!”

The man simply shrugs.

“What should I know? I was just content with not having to make due with the stench of that heathen of yours for any longer.”

Niccolò smashes the man’s head against the wall and instinctively runs to the old lady of the port.

He doesn’t meet the ferryman he employed, nor is he able to catch a glimpse of the boat that is always anchored here, that should be anchored here right now.

When he barges through the door of the midwife’s little herb den he finds her barricaded under the table, her eyes wide with fear and tears and her nose filled with snot as she begs him for forgiveness, pleads with him to understand: her daughter is severely impaired, she needed that money so that she could get a physician to tend to her only child’s mauled leg.

“Where are they?”, Niccolò demands, not even realizing that he doesn’t even know who ‘they’ are supposed to be.

“Th-They’re on a ship directed to Corsica.”, she tells him, “I heard them say that people would pay lots for your servant there. Their boss is a young blonde man.”

Oh, and Niccolò knows exactly who she’s talking about now.

He detaches his purse from his waist and throws it to the old lady, who looks at the golden coins inside of it dumbfounded, but not before Niccolò whispers promises of death - as he holds his long sword to her collar - shall he ever find out she is speaking of them to anybody.

Finding Yusuf is relatively easy from that moment on, if he doesn’t count the slit of his throat brought about by that _masnadiero_ ’s henchmen who had been sent to kill him as soon as he had heard of Niccolò setting foot back to the port before they could leave for the slave market in Corsica for good.

But his wounds heal, as they always do, and slaughtering the idiots after they unknowingly bring him to the right ship proves to be a task even easier than expected once they’re drunk and sated and the deck becomes free for him to check.

He finds Yusuf in the cargo, though, trapped inside one of the many boxes filled with crops and other products, trembling, naked, strictly bound with rope that runs around his thighs and over his chest – enhancing the view of his already hard, heavy brown nipples – blindfolded and gagged with a massive white cloth stuffed inside of his mouth.

Niccolò is not sure Yusuf is awake or - if he is - if he has realized that the italian is here, that it’s him that has opened the box and not one of his tormentors; nevertheless, he helps him out and his Yusuf gives no signs of protest.

Once he gets rid of the ropes, the blindfold and the gag, once Yusuf manages to discern his figure from the muddy texture of the darkness that his eyes had adjusted to – gives him a small smile - the former priest sees that there are two small stones carved painfully inside of his beloved’s ears, to prevent him from hearing and upon a closer look, now that Yusuf is outside of the box and closer to the light of the torch, Niccolò sees that the liberties these crooks took with him are not yet ended: there is a weird iron belt around and about the maghrebi’s waist, one that, much like undergarments, encases his genitalia and keeps cover of the latter and both of his holes – front and back - in an extremely tight vise.

There’s a lock on its front.

“Fils de pute!” is the last thing Niccolò hears before a knife is embedded into his throat (twice in a day, huh?) and before everything turns pitch black.

When he comes to, awaken yet again from one of his little deaths, he finds Yusuf sitting on the corpse of that wretched piece of shit that had kidnapped him and toyed with him - blood trickling down his ears from his already healed cuts where he got rid of the impairing stones - looking for a key that’s not there. A key that they will not find even after searching the whole ship because the bastard had thrown it out into the ocean once they had secured Yusuf, as one of his still living henchmen informs them upon taking his last breath.

Apparently, that man had had the brilliant idea of making more keys to the belt once they got to Corsica, because it was cheaper there, and making pay every patron that wanted to take a look at Yusuf’s wondrous genitalia.

They spend the next few weeks fleeing from the city and searching for a blacksmith willing to cut the iron belt from Yusuf’s middle without success, either because none of the ones they find feel comfortable enough to cut through the metal without permanently damaging Yusuf’s body or simply because they’re too disgusted with the knowledge – or better yet the ignorance – of what Yusuf is to help him; that is until Yusuf can’t take it anymore and cuts the wretched device himself with a saw that indeed violently severs the flesh of his womb, killing him in the process.

When he comes to, Yusuf’s _almuzahara_ has finally stopped, before it could even get to the ‘heating’ process at all, as they realize they spent three weeks of their immortal life in utmost agony.

As Niccolò realizes all of this happened because he wasn’t willing to help Yusuf through it, as he had promised.

But he would make sure this would never happen again.

***

The second time it happens, they’re in Cairo.

It’s been twelve years since the last occurrence and they’re having sex when Yusuf’s ‘waters’ break again; an activity, that of sex, that they have learned to reserve for the warmest hours of their summer days here in what Yusuf had first come to know as the Splendid City of the Fatimids, right after the Salat-al-Zuhr and lunch, when everyone is too sated with food and too wrapped up by the clutches of slumber to come to their workshop. Yusuf’s workshop.

Niccolò is on all fours, his elbows and knees scraping the gentle surface of the linen cloth that separates his flesh from the dusty floor, impaled to the brim with Yusuf’s hardness - his own cock aching and pulsing and entrusted to the gentle, learned hands of his beloved - when he hears the aforementioned curse; in arabic of course.

The language that Niccolò has now learned to speak and love, even if in a raw and unpolished manner unlike Yusuf’s paper refineries.

“Fuck!”, Yusuf complains, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he repeats as he kisses Niccolò’s shoulder and finishes him off, before he hastily retreats from the italian’s hole and, as a consequence, lands on his butt.

As Niccolò turns towards his lover, trying to understand what’s going on, he soon takes in the pool of fluid that has already formed at the base of his Yusuf’s testicles and upon such sight, he too releases a sigh of resignation.

They thought it had stopped for real this time.

The next day Yusuf’s paper workshop remains closed: the woven papyrus sheets and the carefully illuminated paper folia ready to be interlaced with the most refined calligraphy and sewn into a handful of manuscripts are the last orders that his sophisticated costumers come to collect through the crevice of the openwork wooden blinders Yusuf has hung to the windows of their alcove that same morning, as it is customary in Egypt to do whenever a khuntha enters _almuzahara;_ before they are left alone and Yusuf starts to prepare his things for his permanence at the Malhad, the shelter for hermaphrodites that had hosted him as an adolescent more than a hundred years ago when he visited the city with his merchant father, when he and Niccolò still hadn’t crossed blades.

He sees his lover collect the few things he’ll need once he arrives there, a brush, a blanket, a couple of golden coins and his favorite perfumed oil (an ointment that Niccolò will miss very, very much now that Yusuf is about to leave too, leaving him deprived of the grease for their lovemaking) before he gets up and kisses Niccolò on the cheek, letting him know that he’s ready to go.

Once outside, Yusuf covers his now short hair with the green linen cloth he uses as a turban and slids one arm under the italian’s in plain street sight, for every single one of their neighbors to see, so that all of Qāhirat al-Mu'izz might witness the newly wed couple walk their road to the Malahd for their first heat since marriage.

And Nico, as Yusuf calls him now, thinks it’s rather pleasant, for once, not having to hide their happiness.

They head to Fustat, the old capital, barely ten miles south the Citadel built by Salah-al-Din, where the oldest and largest Maladh of all of Cairo (first of three) is located, getting there by late afternoon, just in time for the last admission calls of the day.

It is a modest building at the edge of one of the Nile’s banks, encased by palm trees and defined by a plain light-brown facade littered with shut windows and carefully drilled eaves, accompanied by a square covered walkway that leads to the cistern hall, the hammam and the two dormitories – a shared one for the _taedil_ phase and one made of private chambers for when the critical phase of the _almuhazara_ hits, both capacious of fifty or so guests – where Yusuf will pass the rest of the next two to three weeks; a safe space for any kind of khuntha (even those who are not plagued by _almuhazara_ ) that has nowhere else to go, or simply doesn’t want his debasement to lustful womanhood to become a show for the whole world to see.

They are welcomed in the waiting hall by one of the hammam operators, who snorts upon seeing Niccolò there - and both men are not sure if it is because ‘true’ men are not usually allowed in here (a concession usually reserved only to husbands, fathers and brothers) or because Christians like Niccolò, even if not scarce in Cairo, are still looked upon unfavourably – but nonetheless proceeds to ask Yusuf for his particulars, his symptoms, how far along in the process does he think he is, if he prefers reserving a single room from the beginning, in which case they will need to insist for a quota.

Yusuf shakes his head, gives the middle-aged woman his warmest smile and tells her that normal treatment will be just fine but that he’s soaked wet and he might use a bath before ingesting any kind of medicine or using the provided pads, elongated cloths made of softened papyrus that fill the boxes made of the same material sitting on very table of this hall, and finally inquires whether visits here are allowed at all before the crucial momentum.

“Any male or female relative is allowed to visit the Maladh, including one’s spouse.”, she informs them while scribbling Yusuf’s information over a wooden board, “But any visit must take place in the evening and mustn’t protract later than the call for Isha’a, whether our guest observes it or not. Food can be introduced in the form of gifts, but personal items of the khuntha from the outside world are forbidden.” – and she gestures towards Yusuf’s bundle of things to be brought back with Niccolò – “Finally, visitors must always remain in this hall; your husband shan’t dine with you in the dining hall or join you and the other khunthas in prayer. This is a place reserved for God’s most vulnerable children and we shan’t leave a wolf alone with the newborn lambs.”

She says that last sentence with such seriousness that Yusuf’s smile grows even wider, a sign that he’s trying not to giggle, before looking into Niccolò’s direction with a teasing gaze in his eyes that Niccolò is sure stands for : “Do you hear that, habibi? She believes you’re a wolf.”

Niccolò smiles.

If only the lady knew they were both wolves in their own special way.

When she’s done taking notes, her hand comes to rest over the small of Yusuf’s back, gently commanding him towards the hammam where a bath will be drawn just for him, where they will wash his clothes and explain the rest of the rules, and simultaneously waves with the other a goodbye to Niccolò, letting him know that it’s time for him to go.

So Niccolò walks back home in solitude, stopping by a coptic grocer’s – the only one open during the hours of sunset prayer - to buy the last two loaves of bread and a jug of milk that is warm with the stasis of a whole day, debating to himself whether he should go to Al-Azhar in the morning, to refresh the memory of his lessons on hermaphroditic habits and anatomy, taught by none other than the great physician Abd-al-Latif, scholar and guide that had granted him access to the illuminated medical texts of Galenus and Hippocrates which survived the century old fire of censorhip of the oh-so-great founder of the Ayubbid dinasty of Egypt, Salah-al-Din.

He spends the rest of the evening working his shift in one of the few hospices for the poor that reside in between the Citadel and Yusuf’s shop, where plague and diseases are part of the everyday agenda, like many of his colleagues at Al-Azhar do and -as he tends to a drunken’s open wounds - he hears his name called by one of them, Bashar, who comes over to chat, exchange opinions on one particular guest’s problems and to politely asks how his beautiful new wife is doing.

Niccolò shrugs, thanks him for his kind words and replies very matter of factly that he hopes well, that _almuhazara_ has just started (and again, it will never end to surprise him how these people treat the whole affair as if it was the most natural thing in the world) and that he just dropped him off at the shelter in the Old City.

The other student chuckles, suggests to Nico to take a month off from their classes so that he might correctly prepare. That they will cover for him.

Niccolò smiles back at him and mutters a whispered thank you.

The next day he follows his instincts and goes to the library, trying so hard not to listen to the widespread news of His Splendor the Sultan Al-Malik- Al- Kamil’s incessant, disastrous engagements with the Christians, whose hunger and thirst for land the Muslim forces seem to be unable to quench; for both the shedding of their blood and that of their kind appears to be nothing more than an incentive for the invaders and their slaughter, their rape and their ransack, which spares no woman or child in its fury.

He makes the grandest of efforts attempting not to think constantly about how they should – he and Yusuf both, whose general peacefulness has lead Niccolò to understand how for his beloved fighting had always been more of a duty towards his family and people than a vocation to do something greater – be there, wrestling armies to protect the people from their cruelty - they that can never die and therefore can afford pain to befall them in the place of these persons - as he passes through Al-Azhar’s courtyard and meets some of his friends, where he sees Abd-al-Latif, his teacher, give a lesson on female menstruation to his younger pupils, a naked servant girl just beside him.

Instead, once acquaintances are met and due small chatter is behind him, Niccolò tries to concentrate on Galen’s greek volume – _On the hermaphroditic condition, the perfection between male and female_ – commented in arabic by modern azharite lawmakers and medicine scholars.

The text opens with a brand new illumination that shows a tree from which branches hang all kinds of hermaphroditic genitalia, followed in tow by another fully illustrated page divived into four parts (precisely four circles that contain each a human shape) next to a paragraph that pays a special attention to the kind of khunthas who go through the process of _almuzahara_ , what Galen referred to as a ‘heat’, the warming of the body here depicted through its four phases that comes around approximately every two years – apparently even more stretched in time for Yusuf, who is destined to live forever.

First , for this woman-men – as the text calls them and as the image shows - comes the period of slickness, that lasts approximately five to seven days, in which the vulva between the testicles enlarges and lubricates; the second phase is called the ‘morphing’, and it is the phase that Yusuf and the arab-speaking people call the _taedil_ , the longest one, that spans from seven up to ten days or more, in which the genitals change shape painfully so that both the balls and the penis retreat inward, allowing the vulva and its hole to expand until it becomes big enough to accomodate a penis.

The next stage is not really a stage; it’s called the ‘waiting’ and it’s usually considered a recovery period for the body from the agonies of the morphing, that Galen feels the need to point up might be mortal to a lot of these creatures, if not taken seriously.

The four and last phase is the heat itself, always taking up to seven days, when the body of the woman-man becomes extremely warm - akin to a furnace, Galen says – and the hermaphrodite is incapable of any coherent thought that doesn’t involve sex and the ways to satiate this powerful need.

He then proceeds to describe the scene: a man, feeling as hot as he was set on fire, naked, sweaty, a vulva full of slick that smells and tastes like honey in the middle of his legs, a tiny erect member at the base of said labia similar to a bigger clitoris than to a penis, gushing out precome continuously as its owner keeps begging for cock, to be filled to the brim.

For what Galen has stated through the course of his ‘observations’ of this particular kind of hermaphrodites, they are not able to orgasm without being penetrated, without being tied to a knot – a soft, minuscule rope of flesh at the base of a normal man’s penis that much like that of a dog enlarges, hardens and tightens once inside the woman-man’s vagina (or mouth, Niccolò reads, blushing at the thought) – that will fill them for hours on end with sperm, so that they might become impregnated.

Galen then quotes Hippocrates to explain the origins of this particular set of people, who are as scarce as a tyrant’s instances of mercy (0.98 % of the world population as Nicky would learn as more and more studies came out concerning Joe’s sex in the twentieth century), and says that Prometheus, when fashioning men, had taken into account Zeus’s dislike for humanity and that the Father of Gods would have plagued the Titan’s creations with infertility and sterility if it would help him to get rid of them and so the Friend of Man had inserted a mechanism inside every male that would turn them into half-women might the need for fertile stock ever arise. And to be completely sure his stratagem would work, he shaped said creatures to be irresistible to any capable man.

Truly worthy of his name, this Titan, the ‘one who foresees’.

Galen then calls them Prodiges, a blessed gift by the only friend that man has ever had outside of his kind, and launches himself into an eulogy so unlike a man of medicine that covers many pages, describing the hermaphroditic body so well and in such detail that Niccolò must wonder if the physician had ever had a lover that was to him what Yusuf was to the italian.

However, notes by modern scholars side his every sentence, pointing out that much like Aristotle had said, khunthas are probably the result of nature’s mischievous doing, that Allah has created man and woman and that between these two the hermaphrodites must choose; for they were born with excessive genitalia and when a khuntha like Yusuf marries a woman, he is allowed to continue perform his duties as if he were a man, but he must hide himself everytime _almuhazara_ hits him and avoid as much contact with other men as possible, as he might do or say something that make them lust over him. And once he is taken, he is to be stripped to his wife and sent back to his father’s house, unable to marry or leave the house without a male relative in tow.

If he marries a man, he must leave behind any pretense of manhood himself, shave his head and beard, adapt to the rules that define women’s life depending on the country of residence and always follow his husband’s will.

Too bad that Yusuf’s husband’s will requires none of the above stated.

He spends the rest of the day going back and forth this type of documents, taking notes and trying to refill his head with as much knowledge as possible, before he realizes that it’s almost time for Mahgrib again and he has yet to eat.

He finds nothing open this night and, much to his chagrin, he is forced to go to bed unfed, hoping for sleep to take him as soon as possible as he starts jerking himself off, thinking about Yusuf’s now surely perched up nipples.

That night he dreams.

He has a nightmare that he is sure Yusuf is having as well, so thoroughly connected as they’ve become since they first gave in to their desires.

In front of him, running children, their pupils as dilated as his or Yusuf’s when they experience one of their deaths, are escaping from certain destruction, as fire envelops their homes made of branches and leaves, as they hear their mothers’ cries in a language that Niccolò doesn’t understand for them to run, run, run. And never look back.

He sees cruel men, as they always are in times of war, pillow and ravage and rape. He sees them setting fire to the houses, to these people’s harvest, to the lands behind them, so that no one in their wake may find consolation from the green, and in particular he sees the shape of a man on a horse in between the flames - an image worthy of one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse – riding towards him, a curved sword in his hand. His thin eyes as sharp as his blade and as dark as the night.

Niccolò is ummoving, like it happens in many of his dreams, and the mysterious rider approaches him faster than a voracious eagle, so that when he finally gets to him he whispers something incomprehensible in the most gentle of voices before plunging his blade in Niccolò’s stomach’s direction. .

But before it can hit him, he sees an arm flying just above his head whereas in front of him the goddess of his and Yusuf’s mutual dreams - now armless - swings her sword at the man, yelling _Gengis!_ , as the other comes into sight in a stark blue headpiece ready to shoot an arrow towards this Gengis’ direction.

He wakes up with a jolt, covered in sweat, and it’s not until he heads out his alcove to refresh himself with some clean water of the basin outside that he realizes that he’s crying.

All that pain, all the crying, the severed arm… it all felt so real.

He starts weeping in earnest now, thinking about how he is so blessed, standing here in the middle of the night of a placid polis, sobbing undisturbed and unquestioned with the secret gift of immortality, when those he just dreamed about met their first and only – definite – death.

There are few things Niccolò regrets in his life, the biggest of them all having listened to Pope Urban’s plea - as if his call for liberation hadn’t been in reality a need for unfaltering soldier devotees that would build him and his allies the road to infinite new properties and riches – but if there is one thing that is true is that Niccolò has never meant to do any evil.

Since he was a child he always believed that he had the power to do something good, to make a difference in this world plagued by sufferings and ailments, and he had believed his immortality to be a proof of it.

So why is he wasting it here? In peace? When others are suffering so much?

He is grateful, so infinitely grateful for Yusuf, he really is.

He too imagines a life where they spend their days in peace; he craves for it.

He too would want nothing more than chase Yusuf by the river as they play hide and seek with one another, bringing everybody else to exasperation.

Sometimes he even dreams of growing old together but he can’t help but think of the two women that keep appearing in his dreams.

Of their fierceness - their courage - and starts to believe himself to be nothing but a coward for not being there, resisting injustice side by side with them.

He tries to bring the conversation up with Yusuf the first time he is allowed to see him, when his secretions have mostly stopped and the _taedil_ is taking its toll on him, even though it appears to be a little less stronger than last time, since Yusuf is still able to smile at him and play _shatranj,_ an utmost preferred game in the halls of the Maladh, accompanied by pastries and hot mint tea.

It’s an intense game, that much anyone could tell just by a passing look at them, and it’s made even more tense when in the middle of Yusuf’s thought process for his next move, Niccolò casually asks him – or at least, he tries – if he has recognized the language the children were speaking – shrieking – in their dream.

Yusuf’s hand pauses on one of the pieces and, after a moment, he directs it towards one of Nicky’s, disrupting his defense.

He then says that yes, he recognizes it, it’s farsi, or at least one of its variants; he tells Niccolò, as the italian’s studying his next move, that he thinks he could discern the place, that he believes it to be somewhere in Persia – probably Azerbaijan – because as he and his father were once travelling through the paths of the Silk Road many decades ago he had seen a similar vegetation, a similar way of living. What about it?

Niccolò makes his move, both in the game and in the conversation, and suggests they leave for Azerbaijan then, as soon as Yusuf has recovered.

“There is no need to leave.”, Yusuf replies in arabic, annoyed as Niccolò has never heard him since they were enemies still. Too bad that Niccolò is quite upset himself.

There is a need to leave, he states very matter of factly. They’ve been in this city for almost ten years now, their neighbors are starting to get wary.

They could just move, Yusuf replies.

And Niccolò believes he is about to lose his mind.

“Look, I too, like you, am truly delighted of what we were able to achieve here. Being allowed to marry you – in front of people, in front of your God, in front of any God - is a dream come true; the most wonderful dream. Studying is an activity I never believed the son of a miller such as myself could ever spend his days with. My heart overflows with happiness at the thought of coming back home to you, my most beautiful miniaturist wife. But…”

“But?”, Yusuf inquires him rather forcefully.

Niccolò sighs desperately and runs a hand over his face. He continues.

“But I fear you don’t understand that we are not normal people, not anymore at least. And I can’t stay here playing house with you, knowing that there’s someone out there that God wants us to meet, to help, so that we may make this monstrosity of a world better.”

“Oh, you’re playing house with me, now?” Yusuf presses him, his eyes prickling with tears as Niccolò blushes from shame.

How could he ever say something like that?

“Amore mio, Luce dei miei occhi, Yusuf, perdonami.”, he begins apologizing, “I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I just wanted to say that I believe we’re destined for something greater than this.”

“I am heartbroken to learn that you believe this, whatever you mean by it, is not enough for you.”, Yusuf replies, wiping away his own tears with the sleeves of the black tunic they’ve provided him with, tightened to his waist with a red belt, as he concentrates on the game once again.

“Unlike you, I have never been ‘normal’.” He states solemnly, avoiding Niccolò’s eyes to rest his gaze upon the position of the chess pieces. He goes on.

“Where we are now is a proof of it. And to me getting married, being able to walk through the streets of a city holding the arm of the man I love in plain sight has always proven to be to be an unachievable scenario if I ever wanted to maintain my position as my father’s heir. So that you may come to me, talking about how ‘such a small and tedious life’ is not enough for you feels like an attack on decency, on my persona.”

Niccolò is about to reply that this isn’t true but as he opens his mouth he hears a childish, feminine voice calling for Yusuf and he sees a girl in the distance - claded in a soft, pink tunic - running towards them with all the speed in her body, her eyes green and her skin dark; her hair a beautiful sun made of curly black rays.

She hugs Yusuf from behind and starts giggling and thrashing at his form, while simultaneously playing with the black keffiyeh that he’s wearing, telling him how much darker colors make him look like a brooding old man.

At the sight of the girl, Yusuf’s mood suddenly shifts and he chuckles a little, replying that he is indeed an old man disguised as a youngster, but that people can only see it when he’s wearing black because black is his Achilles’ heel.

He introduces them.

Nico - he says - this is Waris, my new friend, her _Umm_ is laying in the private halls right now waiting for his heat to finish and so me and her are spending all the boring time in this place together; Waris, this is Nico, my husband.

“I thought you were a man, Yusuf.”, she inquires him skeptically, probably referring to the fact that Yusuf does not act like any good khuntha engaged to a man; he doesn’t cut his beard and he has a business all of his own.

“Ah, yes. That is mosltly true, Waris.”, Yusuf tells her with a low voice and a wide grin as he takes her hand and gives it a small peck, “It’ll be our little secret, alright?”

She nods and aquiesces, probably sensing that Yusuf is in no mood to argue, before asking him if she can join the game.

Yusuf tells her that yes, she may, but only if she plays on Yusuf’s side.

And Waris is really good at it, she truly is, because in less then two moves Niccolò’s defenses are crushed and he has no game to play.

And Niccolò acquiesces too, because Yusuf has always liked kids.

A week later, he is reached with news of Yusuf’s heating phase during one of Abd-al-Latif’s tour, when the efendi brings his students to the hospital hall next to Al-Azhar to survey the patients and their state as it’s custom for him to do.

It’s a little boy who is admitted to their presence to bring Niccolò the news, a scoundrel who can’t be older than eight, already signed by the scars left by smallpox and with a voice akin to the sound of a whistle.

“I come from the Maladh of the old city. I’m looking for the husband of one _khuntha_ Yusuf ibn Ibrahim. He can no longer bear to go through _almuzahara_ alone.”

Niccolò’s fellow students break into laughter as some of them elbow him playfully in the gut and wink, wishing him good luck.

He blushes. But he excuses himself from the presence of his master anyway, telling him that he’ll be back as soon as the situation allows him.

“Take your time, Nico.”, the Efendi simply replies and goes about with his lesson as if nothing ever happened, implying that both of them have greater things to do.

When Niccolò and the boy get to the shelter, the supervisor leads the italian through the corridors of the building until they arrive in front of a secured door, that the old man, whose face is covered by a thick linen cloth that Niccolò and his fellow students use whenever they visit a contagious leper, unlocks with three swift motions.

Once he lets him through, Niccolò understands why the man is wearig the cloth, because he is immediately overwhelmed by the smell - that same odor he encountered between Yusuf’s thighs for the first time by the french riviera (so sweet and so heavenly) – that now is powered infinitely more by the presence of not one, not two but what Niccolò believes are more than ten khunthas behind the doors of the long corridor in front of him, reaching that conclusion by judging the number of keens and moans that he’s hearing.

They’re not that many compared to the population of Cairo alone, Niccolò would admit, but they are a lot if it is considered that theirs is an extremely rare condition and that the dormitory downstairs hosts more than twenty.

The sixteenth on the right, the old man tells him before hurriedly closing the door behind him, abandoning Niccolò to the sheer potency of all of the smells combined, to the sweetness of these men’s pleads and moans.

When he enters into Yusuf’s chamber, his mind heavy and foggy with racked up lust, a square space provided with two sealed windows and a small table where a piece of paper with Waris’ goodbye poem lays, he has an initial difficulty to discern Yusuf’s curled shape through the darkness of the shadow; but as his eyes quickly adjust to the lack of light – that penetrates solely from the cracks of the windows – he sees that Yusuf is clean shaven.

Not only have they gotten rid of his short hair and beard, but the overall body hair has been removed as well, leaving his skin to glisten with sweat and oils that the operators of the Malahd have used to anoint him. To make him more desirable.

As if Nicolò wouldn’t want Yusuf however he came.

Tired of stalling at his lover’s sight, Niccolò reaches his beloved and begins caressing his shivering form; kisses his oiled skin first on the shoulder, then over the neck, under his jaw, all the while the maghrebi utters moans and pleases, too incoherent to talk, but Niccolò truly hopes – at least from what his lover’s eyes seem to imply – that Yusuf is happy to see him, all things and altercations considered.

Yusuf’s greedy lips are all the confirmation that he needs. Soon enough, Niccolò is pulled to rest on top of his hermaphrodite in a tight embrace over the bed, as they plunge and ravage into one another’s mouths with their tongues, almost as if they had never touched each other before.

In a way, it is true, Niccolò thinks as he gets rid of his own clothes, as he curses feeling Yusuf’s hard nipples press against his clothed chest, until he can’t bear it no longer and shifts his assaulting mouth towards the hills of the little buds.

They have never known each other during Yusuf’s blossoming and it feels kind of new – kind of special and almost moving - and tears of joy fill his already watery eyes.

He takes Yusuf’s mouth first.

Lies against the headboard on the bed and lets Yusuf - his twitching form laying prone on the mattress as he slides a hand down his chest to his own tiny erection so that he could play with its tip - lap at Niccolò’s hardness with his tongue, gently suckling its head with his lips as if he was savoring the juiciest of figues.

Soon enough, his tongue is going from teasing the slit at the base of Nico’s cock - where the former priest can feel it forming now, that hypersensitive rope of flesh that Hippocrates had called a knot – to lick his way down the burgeoning vein of Nico’s shaft to his lover’s balls, which sensitive flesh he takes between his teeth – earning a hiss from Niccolò – lapping and nipping and licking until the knot is out of Niccolò’s urethra, thrashing and ready to bind.

He’s beautiful, Niccolò thinks as he caresses the soft buzz of hair left by a sharp razor over his shaven head, and he thinks he’s even more gorgeous when he looks pleadingly into Niccolò’s eyes with his deer-like ones before swallowing his lover whole in one swift, practiced motion.

Next thing he knows, Niccolò is coming hard down Yusuf’s throat, basking in sheer bliss, even though he does not expect for Yusuf to just stay there, drinking his semen diligently until the last drop and until it is way too late for Niccolò to pull out.

The little string of hardening flesh at the base of his cock has bloated beyond repair, sealing its owner and the mouth of his lover into a tight, hypersensitive knot.

Niccolò feels like he’s been set on fire; his cock feels impossibly hard and he can feel it twitch and thrive inside Yusuf’s mouth – well lodged and locked in place by the knot – as loads and loads of cum keep spurting out of him, ending up in between Yusuf’s lips - perfectly stretched, perfectly pink and dewy around the base of his shaft - who’s forced to swallow again and again until Nico’s completely spent.

It takes hours, what feels like days, or at least as many as it’s required for day to turn into night, and even when Niccolò is sure that nothing else could possibly come outside of him, his knot keeps tightening, flamed and aroused by Yusuf’s sweet lips and the involuntary lappings of his gentle tongue; by his gag reflex when he isn’t able to breathe ( his nose is still pressed to Niccolò’s bush of pubic hair) and by the gentle hummings his vocal cords release into his larynx everytime he tries to speak, coughing and gagging in the process.

He tries to fall asleep, hoping that slumber might will his arousal away but even when he finds a position comfortable enough for the both of them to spend the night without suffocating his Yusuf, he still wakes up impossibly hard; his knot as sensitive as before.

As a matter of fact, this whole affair of the knot – that was supposed to be the most sacred time for a khuntha, the most pleasant carnal experience a man could ever go through – feels like it’s all a myrthless joke, because his tactic didn’t work at all and he feels another bigger, thicker, load of cum leave his cock as he startles the exhausted Yusuf awake, who starts coughing and gagging and sniffling and crying, because he too realizes that this agony is starting all over again.

By the end of it all, Niccolò has no other choice and when the warden passes by to ask if everything is alright he asks the eunuch for help.

They spend the next days huddled to one another as Yusuf’s desire is still so thick he doesn’t let Niccolò leave the room not even to relieve his bodily needs and instead demands the costant participation of an ever erect cock – every minute of every day, all the time - may he be under, on or upon it.

So Niccolò releases a sigh and wills himself not to leave, because if Yusuf is going through this, so is he. And he shan’t deprive his hole of his knot – that somehow, inexplicably, Yusuf still wants - not even for an instant.

By the end of the sixth day, Yusuf seems to have regained a little bit of control, of coherence, as his eyes loose fogginess and his breathing becomes quieter – as his nipples and tiny shaft turn softer - and lets him know, when Niccolò’s knot is finally slacking off, that he saw Waris die the night before, in one of their dreams, and he knows that Niccolò has seen it too.

“Era solo un sogno, amore mio.”, Niccolò tries to soothe him, both with his words and the caresses on his arms, while he recollects the dream of poor Waris’s throat being slit open by the troops of Frederick II’s and the rape of her mother, a young man whose cries and screams for his daughter turn into gruesome laments when his assailants decide they’ve had enough of his mouth and cut his tongue.

He doesn’t know why they dreamt of them. They never dream of someone who isn’t like them, but Niccolò wouldn’t be surprised to learn that after immortality, they’re also being gifted with clairvoyance.

“You dreamt of it too.”, he replies, looking at the wall in front of them. “So that means it must have happened.”

They stay quiet for a bit, caressing each other as their bodies adjust to one another and until Niccolò’s dick is finally released from Yusuf’s hole and - as soon as he slides out - he tries to go for a kiss, but he’s stopped dead in his track when he catches a glimpse of Yusuf’s eyes, chiseled by resignation and sadness.

“When this is over”, he says, pointing at his morphing genitalia, “we will leave for Persia. You’re right, we can no longer stay here and the women in our dreams - may them be goddesses or demons - they’re doing something good. Something better. And you and me both were trained to fight.”

So children like Waris, his sweet Waris, he whispers slowly and almost imperceptible, won’t have to go through this.

Niccolò hums his approval and as he sees his lover get up and walk up to the basin full of water to refresh himself, he gets out of their room to finally relieve himself in a true cesspit, trying to fight off the urge to succumb to sleep right then and there.

They leave with the favor of the night.

***

The third time it happens, it’s been thirty years from Cairo and they’re on horseback, riding through the heights and plains of the Caucasus mountains, fighting as they never have after getting together.

They can see the Caspian Sea from up here, and it’s beautiful, surrounded by forests as it is, in one of the now rare moments fire and marauds aren’t devastating its views, or – at least – it would be beautiful if Yusuf wasn’t yelling at Niccolò.

He’s drained, he tells Niccolò in his native language, he is so fucking _stanco di tutto questo_.

They spent the last three decades looking for the women in their dreams, fighting their way through war, famine and all the unjustified punishments that have befallen these once proud kingdoms, this once flourishing land, since the Mongols have invaded them; since Gengis Khan’s – and that of his successors - soft spot for cruelty and extermination have ravaged Caucasia with unstoppable vehemence.

Yusuf’s beard and curls have grown longer since their arrival (the latter kept in a braided bun under his worn green turban) whereas Niccolò has shaven his head clean and let the hair on his face grow until it became almost impossible to discern the outline of his upper lip from afar, a most convenient peculiarity right in this very moment. Because if there is something that Niccolò hates – truly, wholeheartedly hates – is when someone can tell how upset he is… and surely the grimace under his beard would give it all away.

“Non ce la faccio più, Niccolò.”, he says, “I can’t stand wandering from village to village anymore, looking for someone we don’t even know for sure to truly exist. I’m tired of war, I’m tired of seeing all of these broken people. Why can’t we just settle for once. There are plenty of places we could dig roots in without being bothered.”

“So you would leave these people in danger?”, Niccolò inquires him, straddling his horse to run ahead of Yusuf, blocking his path on the rocky trail, “You would allow mayhem to run through these lands as we retreat to live peacefully and undisturbed? When we have such gifts?”

Yusuf’s eyes water at the accusation, his face contorts in outrage as he holds his silence, carefully choosing the next words to use because he, unlike Niccolò, knows better and he’s perfectly aware that one of them needs to be the adult in this situation.

“I’m not saying I don’t want to help.”, Yusuf rebukes him, seething the words with anger that Niccolò wouldn’t believe him capable of, if he hadn’t died under Yusuf’s hand many times over.

“Have I ever run from the from the ferocity of a blade? Have I ever denied my horse and my services to any fugitive in need? No! And I’m beyond done with this accusation of yours. I’m merely suggesting that…”

Yusuf’s eyes widen all of a sudden, stopping mid-sentence, taken by something Niccolò initially cannot recognize.

He can’t breathe, or at least it looks like so, he dry heaves, clutches at his chest and the next thing they know Yusuf’s lost balance and he’s fallen from his horse.

Niccolò is at his side in the matter of an instant, discarding the noises coming from their running horses, upset and terrified by the unforeseen venue.

It is terrifying. Yusuf’s gasping for breath as if he was a carp fished out of water. He’s punching at his chest, his heartbeat has become so vivid and loud that Niccolò’s afraid beloved’s heart might burst out of his chest.

The maghrebi’s skin is as hot as raging fire and Yusuf is losing his mind trying to get himself undressed, which he only manages through the help of his lover before retching violently.

And for a brief moment Niccolò wonders if he’s about to go, if that’s their manner, if when their moment comes they’ll combust into flames like phoenixes.

But the wetness and the blood that pool at the hem of Yusuf’s pants and that Niccolò catches a glimpse of just because he’s helping Yusuf undress tells him a whole different story.

As a matter of fact, once Niccolò’s lover is naked, the italian is presented with a view akin to that of _taedil_ : Yusuf’s genitalia are morphing once again; this time though, it came with no warning, no preparation. No adjustment.

And it’s happening faster than they have ever seen.

Yusuf’s blossoming now feels like an Ovidian Metamorphosis – sudden, brutal and traumatic; the blood he can see is the tearing of Yusuf’s skin and flesh trying to make room for his interchangeable reproductive organs as fast as they can. The wetness sticking at their epidermis a pathetic substitute for the juicy fluid that was the promise of pleasure for whoever might surpass the month of _almuhazara_.

He briefly recollects Galen and the handwritten phrase that he had so easily discarded back in Cairo.

_There might come a time in which the woman-man will bear the morphings of his body no more, in which he might finally succumb to the pain in his joints. That is indeed the destiny of many children of Hermaphroditus, taken young as their own flesh and blood tears them apart._

But Yusuf’s body cannot surrender and his agony reaches no end as every tearing, every cut quickly turns into rejuvenation, panacea.

Yusuf screams.

His penis and his nipples are hard - so hopelessly erected again - against all of his might and his will and he starts crying – weeping in earnest.

It’s not pleasant, what happens after Yusuf’s genitals have settled.

He is desperate beyond reason, he thrashes and kicks and wails and begs Niccolò to take him, to make this stop, because it has never hurt like this before and he feels he might die from it if he could.

Niccolò doesn’t want to; it’s scaring him to – he’ll have to laugh at himself later for that thought- death what’s happening.

Most of all, he doesn’t know if it’ll make anything better.

In fact, for as much pain as Yusuf is in right now, he thinks a hard member breeching his hole – that’s not slick, as it should be, if not for the blood of the shredding – can only make it worse.

But in the end, he can’t do anything but comply, because Yusuf is _howling._

_And why, for the love of God, why is this happening to them._

It’s truly awful what they do, ungodly if you ask Niccolò.

Both because none of them would have ever wanted their argument to end like this (why, why can’t Niccolò ever listen to the best thing that’s ever happened to him?) and because, really, Niccolò thinks as he starts spilling tears, as Yusuf’s laments grow more broken at each thrust, their love doesn’t deserve this, not after so many years.

They don’t deserve to be slaves to their own nature. They don’t deserve to be fighting each other over dream shadows and the cruelty of the world, not after all they went through together.

But at least, the locking of the knot and Niccolò’s semen seem to be able to level Yusuf’s temperature and agitation down. And when Niccolò finally manages to pull out, after hours back to back with the pointy rocks of the road, it would appear that all has ended.

Yusuf’s body is no longer burning, his breathing is shallow but otherwise normal, and he has become quieter, his eyes dawdling to an indefinite point between the trees in front of them.

Blood and cum coat his glistening genitalia, which are slowly transposing back to what they were, with nothing of the same sheer potency that had it transmuting violently just at the beginning of this afternoon. His womb looks slightly more curved, rounder, and the former priest can’t help but think -blushing, ashamed of himself - that it was all that sperm shot by his cock that made it rise like that.

He hasn’t come.

Slowly, Niccolò reaches for Yusuf’s face and tries to cradle it between his hands, because he so desperately wants to kiss him, to yell into his mouth “Forgive me, forgive me. I’m an idiot, forgive me.” but his beloved shifts his visage out of his reach.

And that’s fair.

He helps him up when Yusuf feels like so and covers his shoulder with his coat, because his wife’s own clothes are useless now, torn and shredded.

Niccolò convinces himself that Yusuf is right in the end. That they deserve better than this endless vagabond life led through strife, war and misery in search of two shadows in their dreams and so, after thirty years, they finally settle again.

Here, on top of the Mountains of Caucasus.

They find an abandoned house – one that must have homed a woodcutter and his family, considering the size of the cabin and the reserve filled with wood attached to the left of the main entrance - decayed by years of neglect, garnished with dozens of racemate from the nearby trees and full of shattered glass from the broken windows (signs of an attack alongside the stains of blood on the floor) that, if summing it all up, is not in that bad of a shape. Easily restorable.

There’s a stream of clean water nearby, and there grows plenty of mushrooms and multiple other edible plants near here. On top of that, they soon find out that they’re surrounded by miles and miles of uncontaminated forest in which they can hunt in peace and one of their first days here Yusuf manages to catch a deer.

Down at the base of the mountain - instead - there’s a small village, big enough for them to trade their livings and earning a few more coins, but way too small for them to ever entertain the idea of starting a life there.

It turned out, in the end, that it’s not only Niccolò’s people who are ignorant about khunthas, as they learned through insults and petty retaliations – mostly directed at Yusuf - when ambling through the hills and the rural plains of Persia.

It is not only in Europe that most of them are killed or mutilated at birth, persecuted as adults.

And even if these people didn’t take issue with the fact that Yusuf is not a ‘real’ man, he still acts and looks like one, considers himself one - because oh, his sweet Yusuf is not afraid of wearing a dress and growing a beard, is so wonderful and full of life that he sees no contradiction between sinking his lengthy cock into Niccolò’s rear as if it was a dagger cutting through a fruit and calling himself a wife, wishing to be a mother – and they would never understand their love. Their marriage.

And even if they could, it is Niccolò that can’t risk it.

So they stick with the woods.

Yusuf is being silent lately. He cuddles next to Niccolò, spoons him during the night, prepares food with him and plays games of cards but it’s clear that something’s bothering his soul.

And Niccolò truly hopes that it’s not their last argument that’s constantly on his mind.

Because the italian knows he has been unfair to him. Accused him of cowardice and selfishness when all Yusuf had asked of him had been repose.

And yet, he doesnt’ think he can bring himself to apologize. Because, for whatever words he might have used, Niccolò truly believed that what they were doing was necessary; he still somehow does. But he’s as tired as Yusuf is and doesn’t want to fight with him anymore.

He doesn’t want to hurt his feelings.

He doesn’t want Yusuf to leave.

One day, though, Niccolò’s wife comes back from the village suspiciously later than usual (he’s the only one who runs errands and shops there as he’s the only one who speaks a decent enough farsi that the inhabitants down below understand him), with little to none of their goods having been sold and upon questioning, Yusuf refuses to reply, simply heads out to wash himself with the water from the outdoor .

However, after dinner, after having consumed the most of his mushroom and blueberries stew, the maghrebi proceeds to inform him that he’s feeling a little bit dizzy and that he will retire for the night, that a child has kicked him in the belly this morning and so he doesn’t think he’ll be able to finish the meal.

Niccolò is immediately up on his feet.

A child? What child? Why would they even do that?

Too many memories of ill-treatments of Yusuf’s kind come to his mind and he doesn’t know why he got up, what he thinks he’s going to do but he won’t let this pass. Not again.

They’re finally living a quiet life, as Yusuf’s always wanted.

He won’t let anything and anybody ruin it.

Yusuf, however, only chuckles.

“Calm down, my love” – that endearment, finally back into his mouth, in between his gentle lips and upon his poetic tongue – “It was a small child. A very, very small child.”

“Why would a small child kic-“

“In fact,” Yusuf goes on, ignoring Niccolò’s distress, “I believe it was just a baby.”

Yusuf stretches then, a smirk on his face, and Niccolò sees him skimming his right hand to rest upon his lower abdomen, illuminated by the light of their compact cooking fire.

And then – at last - Niccolò acknowledges what’s transpiring.

Tears fill his eyes as his knees give in, landing so heavily on the dusty floor that it startles Yusuf a little, his beloved, his wife – his life – that crawls to him with a smile on his face and his hand still on his belly, where their – _their_ – baby resides, and hugs his prone form; kisses his back and whispers sweet lullabies into his now grown hair.

“Ana uHibbuk.”, Yusuf states as he presses a kiss to the front of his crying lover, “Ti amo così tanto.” He repeats in italian, as if one time is not enough.

As if all the languages in the world wouldn’t be enough to express the scale of their love.

Yusuf’s pregnant. He’s pregnant and Niccolò wants to laugh, because he’s a man. He’s a khuntha. He’s a hermaphrodite.

Whatever it is, he’s perfect and Niccolò couldn’t be happier.

In the next few months, Niccolò understands fully well how annoying he can become, because he starts doting after Yusuf’s every move up to the point that he doesn’t allow him to lift even a finger.

He wakes up first in the morning – an enormous smile on his face – he prepares breakfast, lunch, dinner and then leaves for a hunt.

When he comes home and spots Yusuf bent over the side of a little hill to collect raw berries and leaves, Niccolò guides him home and finishes the work for him, coming back with a basket full of delicacies.

He cuts wood, he starts the fire at sunset and puts it down at night, before going to bed.

He cleans the house first and second floor, he makes them fur coats for the winter and travels to the village whenever he has the intuition that Yusuf might need something (bettering at every humiliating exchange of words his terrible farsi) may it be sheets of paper, graphite, medicine or whatever other thing Yusuf would desire.

A particular food for his cravings, a new set of boots, shaving cream.

It gets to a point in which Niccolò takes the knife out of Yusuf’s hand so that he might be the one shaving him – he would never want his beautiful, pregnant wife to tire himself out with this simple act – the last drop that makes Yusuf go insane.

“I don’t need you to coddle me.”, he yells at him, “I’m barely four months along. And besides, what am I supposed to do if you do everything in my stead? Do you have special remedies for boredom?”

But Niccolò is not listening to him, he keeps giggling, hiding his face into Yusuf’s neck so that he might leave love marks there which will instantly fade, and his lover rolls his eyes. Tells him that he is incorrigible. Places a hand over his belly and tells their child that their Baba will drive their Maman insane.

Then, four months stretch into eight and winter washes over them like the Great Flood of the Almighty. Rains and heavy snow punctuate their otherwise extremely domestic days, passed pressed to one another’s back – covered by cotton shirts and wool scarves – as Niccolò, who has let his beautiful hair grow and has it tied into a ponytail, works on knitting soft bootees for the baby (then small hats and warm blankets) and Yusuf levels the edges of their wooden scraps to make toys that look like lions and rabbits.

Yusuf’s belly has risen quite a lot, even if it hasn’t become as full as that of a woman’s, and his hole has almost completely opened back up, his vulva flourishing over his testicles with such a naturality that it almost seems unbelievable recalling how all of this started.

It’s even been arousing at times, when Niccolò’s wife reminded him of Galen’s recommendation: i _f the hole of a hermaphrodite is not yet stretched enough before birth, it might be useful to engage in sexual activity whenever possible, so that the channel might naturally enlarge_.

“Do you think it’s stretched enough?” Niccolò remembers Yusuf asking him one day, naked and laying over the alcove they turned into their marital bed on the second floor - where they have set the baby’s crib as well – eyes dark with lust, a provocative smile under his stubble, as he was skimming his hand over a dark brown nipple – heavy with milk – and massaging his vulva with the other, legs wide open.

That had been the fastest erection of Niccolò’s centenarian life.

As a matter of fact, it is during one of these instances of ‘overdiligence’ to listening to Hippocrates’ advice that their children are born.

Yusuf’s waters (this time those of birth) break in the middle of the act and they’re forced to stop because not one but two tiny lives are eager to come into this world stricken by famine and injustice.

They call them Maryam and Giorgio – Iorgos as the natives will later refer to him– the first after the Holy Virgin Mary and like Yusuf’s favorite sister and the second like Niccolò’s grandfather, the only person of his family that had ever showed him any love.

Maryam is lively and likes to play; and you can see that in her eyes whenever she makes bubbles while suckling hungrily from Yusuf’s heavy chest – whose nipples are oh so round, so full and so perfect that Niccolò would lie saying he didn’t latch onto his wife’s breasts himself from time to time– her soft fluff of hair being stroked behind her ear by her loving mother, who looks at her adoringly, while singing songs about the moon, the sun and the stars.

Giorgio is more grumpy, refuses to latch onto his Maman’s nipple until the latter decides to shave, because the little kid doesn’t like the feeling of Yusuf’s hair in his mouth; and when he finally deigns them of his cooperation into feeding him, he bites down at Yusuf’s nipples like the little pest that he is.

Yet, he will not go to sleep if he isn’t placed over his mother’s chest.

At night, they sleep all together on the same bed, their two children carefully placed over Yusuf’s sternum as Niccolò’s beloved succumbs to slumber… a luxury that Niccolò doesn’t allow himself until he is sure that every single one of his precious has fallen asleep.

“Non combinerai mai niente, nella tua vita”, Niccolò remembers his father telling him after a beating, blood and spit coating his fourteen year old face.

The joke is on him, though, he thinks as he watches his two little bundles of happiness lay on the torso of the most beautiful creature Niccolò has ever met – _and, really, what do his dreams even matter now? Who are the two goddesses in their wake in front of such a miracle?_

_You shall never get anything done in your life_ – his father had said to him, cruel and imperative as Niccolò always remembered him.

But the joke’s on him, Niccolò keeps reassuring himself as he looks at his family.

He got so much more done than his father could have ever hoped for himself.

***

The fourth time _almuhazara_ hits, their twins are almost five and they appear to have switched characters.

Maryam - their girl - has grown into a quiet young lady, with tanned skin, steely blue eyes and wild golden locks that she refuses to tie or comb in any shape or form, perpetually garbed in her tiny red dress, carefully observing of the people and things surrounding her to the point of chagrin.

She is rather beautiful, a spectacle for the eyes, and whenever she decides her father and brother are worthy of her company, she’ll come to the village down the mountain, taking everybody’s breath away.

The little houri, that’s how the dwellers at the base of the mountain call her; an epithet that falls on deaf ears since Maryam has never refrained from showing these people her disinterest to their flattery, her complete and utter apathy to their regard, excluding – obviously – the little things that they produce: small objects and musical instruments, books of passing street vendors and dolls sewn together by the wrinkled hands of the town matriarchs.

She barely speaks, at least to him; and when she does all Niccolò can hear from her is a muffled whisper trapped in between her head and her mother’s womb, a most comforting place for Maryam, who has never shied away from showing her disappointment for being forced to leave Yusuf’s belly – whether that be her refusal to leave her mother’s side for most of the time or the constant attention from Yusuf that she stole from her brother, the shy one between the two - the only human beside Giorgio that she appears to like, to love.

“She is not a behemoth.”, Yusuf had told him one night, listening to Niccolò’s reservations upon her apparent lack of love towards her father as he breastfed her, a bond that she had refused letting anyone severe when her mother’s milk still flew copiously from his nipples, especially now that her brother had been weaned and had left her space from more.

“Nor is she a houri. After all, it is only natural for a child to cling to the source of their life. She’ll grow out of it eventually, when her interests shift to something else. Now she’s observing. Don’t think she doesn’t love you just because she doesn’t show it the same way she does with me.”

Niccolò had avoided replying that she didn’t seem interested in anything at all if not herself.

Giorgio instead, their smart boy, is the lively one between the two of them; unlike his sister, who has the appearance of a celestial being, Giorgio’s features are pretty normal for a boy his age: freckles adorning his adorable white smile and black hair shaped in the form of a bowl that hide his lashes and threaten to invade the space of his cute black eyes. He is also always on the run, always ready to venture to the village or into the woods to learn something new.

And Giorgio, conversely to Maryam, leans happily into his father’s touch anyway he can, asks him everyday to tell him a new story.

He is the one to always go down the village with him, the one to propose it and he’s also the one Niccolò looses sight of all of the time, only so that he may find him sitting quietly and adoringly in front of the new show of each vagabond acrobat passing through town, intent on studying their moves, their appearances, their words, so that he may replicate them to his parents later at night.

He’s the one to go on hunts with him and to ask Niccolò which plant and stream and bird is that, the one who tells him for no reason at all that he wants to become like Niccolò when he grows up, burying his face into his father’s front cloak on their return from the forest.

If there is an adjective Niccolò would use to describe his children, he would state they are curios, each of them in the own, unique way.

Maryam is straightforward in her needs, Giorgio hesitant and shy.

And it is when the two of them are bickering over what kind of candy should Baba bring home the next day – because, really, Maryam says, it’s always Giorgio’s favorite, and she’s tired of it – that Yusuf starts coughing from his mouth and spurting from his hole, delivering a sickly sweet odor of wild honey and soap in the air around them much like he had done in Cairo.

It is not as violent as the last time - in fact it’s rather simply abrupt - but Niccolò and Yusuf are the same forced to run upstairs and put some space between them and their children, who look at them astounded when they say that Maman isn’t feeling well, right before Maryam breaks into a hysterical cry upon learning that no, she has to stay downstairs with her brother, she can’t follow them.

The next few hours are an incessant pastiche of howling cries of “Maman! Maman!”, loud whispers that try to remain even as they keep struggling to calm the screaming down from Giorgio, of arousal, of Yusuf riding Niccolò’s dick as hard as he can, of Niccolò’s possessive hunger towards his wife’s body that – because of their blessed children – he hasn’t had access to in a very long time, of knots inflating and streams of cum spurting from the both of them at all times.

It is finished as fast as it has begun, almost as if it felt the need to cave in to Maryam’s unceasing bumps to the ceiling door that separates the coupling pair from their babies, so that the little girl can finally throw herself into Yusuf’s naked chest, weeping and trembling and upset so much that she doesn’t even notice her parents’ nakedness – a state that little Giorgio, that climbs shyly into the room just after her, doesn’t imagine questioning.

And that’s the last time Yusuf ever gets pregnant again, before their world comes crumbling down.

It starts subtly: a headache there, some vomiting during the night – in the early mornings - until one day Yusuf wakes up and he’s glowing again, of that same shine that a younger, more ingenuous Niccolò hadn’t been able to recognize at first.

When they explain the situation to their children, Giorgio simply stares at them with a side look, befuddled, and Maryam is just so hopelessly jealous of her mother that upon learning of the arrival of a new child begins pouting and doesn’t let go of her frown until Yusuf’s belly starts to grow, when she becomes enamoured with it.

But in truth, they all are starstruck by it.

The children are naturally curious like their father and the stretch that Yusuf’s womb can reach is beyond fascinating; the feeling of a child kicking against the soft flesh that he now keeps nude as to allow his family to feel all that he is – that Niccolò has already had the privilege to caress once – a marvel.

“Our little immortal family is growing”, Yusuf tells him one night as he lies prone on their mattress, after their children have fallen asleep and while Niccolò is running his hands over his beloved’s stomach, the need to touch and caress his yet unborn child strong within him.

He doesn’t respond right away; instead, he struggles to come up with the best possible words that he can use to address the situation.

_We have never seen them walking side by side the women of our dreams once._

_Nothing lasts forever._

“How can you be so sure they are immortal?”, he settles, “We have no way to know.”

Yusuf laughs at him; a nervous, wretched laugh.

“I just know.”, he says in an overly-confident statement that appears to have been uttered more to convince himself of a delusion that he cannot prove than to persuade his husband.

“I know they will run unscathed through the plains and oceans of this earth. Just as we will.”

_They were never in our dreams. Not even once._

Niccolò nestles his face in between Yusuf’s shoulder and neck, sighs and presses a kiss to the nape of his wife’s neck. Whispers to his ear to go to sleep.

“I’m not certain I want them to, though.” Is the last thing the italian finds the courage to object before they succumb to slumber.

Seven months in, Niccolò comes home from a hunt expecting to find his newly pregnant wife and his twins idling about in the yard of their forest alcove as he left them: Giorgio testing the laws of fortune that until today have allowed him to run intact as he practices reaching new altitudes on the seat of his swing - “Why scolding him?” Yusuf kept telling him, “It’s not like they can get hurt.”, an assumption of inherited immortality that Niccolò now doesn’t even bother to try and question, much to Yusuf’s dislike, who looks at him expectantly, virtually needing Niccolò to believe him - Maryam clumsily and cheerfully playing the chords of the small setar they had purchased a while ago to spend the nights before bedtime; and Yusuf sketching their children with charcoal using Maryam’s back (much to their little girl’s amusement) as a balance board, a habit he had taken up since their children’s birth.

Alternatively, he finds his two firstborns just beside their treshold, silent and wary as he rarely sees them - one behind the other - carefully trying not to be caught eavesdropping.

They’re holding their maman’s paper opus in their hand: a sketch of Maryam’s golden curls and Giorgio’s dimples as the features of his mouth turn into a display of pure euphoria, typical of when he reaches the highest point that his swing can extend to and that Yusuf loves so much to pinch and capture in paper.

“Where’s your Mother?”, Niccolò inquires them both, interrupting their trance-like anticipation while securing his saddled horse to the post next to the entrance door.

“He’s inside.”, Giorgio whispers to his ear when Niccolò finally settles at their height, pulling the both of them closer into a hug, Maryam’s intent stare never wavering from the curtain, her quiet, observing persona back as soon as her mother is not with her.

“There are two ladies with him. They say they know you.”, he goes on, “Maman said they’re from the Land of Dreams.”

Niccolò flinches. He makes to open his mouth but no sound comes out of it.

He trembles, ruffles their hair and tells them to stay outside (Maryam’s stare never once failing bearing into him) before he gently – fearfully - pulls away the embroidered curtain of their entrance, knowing full well that nothing will ever be the same after he does, and steps inside his own house as if he was venturing in another realm of reality, the Sancta Sanctorum of his and Yusuf’s slumber.

He swallows.

Snippets of a dream flood his senses to the brim.

\- _in front of him, a plain field, grass from one end to the other, and two women (spirits, demons? He doesn’t know) naked on their horses run up to him faster and faster until he can see them clearly, as clear as a dream can get_ -

Narrow black eyes, white teeth, satyric smiles and a long, brown braid.

In his own home, in front of his real eyes, two shapes sit next to the fireplace, two bowls of milk and a basket of bread in front of them, both untouched; his Yususf just a couple of feet away as he leans his heavy frame with his back to a counter, a hand on his pregnant belly, stroking the child inside it gently, hurriedly.

It is clear that a conversation has being going during his absence and the heaviness of it is palpable, but Niccolò’s sole focus is on the women that have turned to his direction.

They’re both looking at him, lingering their gaze upon his frame as if they’d never seen a man, idle curiosity and anticipation sparkling through their eyes.

They’re beautiful, Niccolò thinks once he has approached enough to sit near the fireplace just as they have, dumbfounded and at a loss of words just like them, his hands trembling with a need to touch their faces, to assest the weight of their feathery lashes, to smell their robes roughened with time, mud and rain, to chew on the hair that they have flaunted in front of him so many times over in his dreams… and to become deaf with a laughter that he does not expect to hear so vividly, because he couldn’t have up until now.

One of them, the one with eyes as sharp as blades but as playful as those of a fox cub, her hair tied behind her head in a carefully braided bun held in place by a violet band, breaks their trance first; she takes Niccolò’s hands into hers and between giggles – oh the sweet familiarity that comes within beings that share the same destiny! – presses her lips to his knuckles and Niccolò’s face becomes wet with tears.

The other one’s stern expression quickly softens into a smile, she disrobes her head from the scarf she hides her beautiful long braid in – that hair, that wavy, floating, brown long hair – and mumbles something in a new language Niccolò’s never heard of, one of the many Nicky will learn, before blushing and retreating to a more familiar farsi, popular throughout the people of Caucasus, as soon as she understands that Niccolò doesn’t recognize it.

They’re here, they’re finally here and it almost seems impossible.

They’re here and Yusuf looks terrified.

Before Niccolò can even manage to respond to the brown haired woman – Andromákhē, he remembers the other calling her from one of her dreams – the reddish hue of sunset comes in through the lifted curtain partially barred only by the shape of his daughter, unyielding and so secure in her needs that she can’t seem to spare a thought over the thick atmosphere that can be breathed in the room, as the same cannot be said of his own son who is still lingering beside the treshold, almost hiding himself.

“Maman.”, Maryam says once she gets to her mother, places a kiss and then her cheek over his bloated, naked womb, “Maman, I’m hungry.”

Yusuf strokes her hair and places her wild golden locks behind her left ear as she borrows into him, an effort of keeping the hair out of her eyes that he had learned would be best to do when faced with Maryam’s absolute refusal to have it braided.

“What do you want to eat?”, he questions her.

“I want milk soup.”, she replies, her face still between her mum’s belly and arms, “The one you make with Bilba’s eggs and Amalathia’s milk.”

Yusuf snickers, always amused at the names their daughter has a habit to pick for every animal and plant they bring home (the first one for their chicken and the second one for their goat), and looks around the room, finally having regained some of his vivacity.

He beckons at Giorgio to come inside and clasps his hands together.

“Well, let us begin preparing then. But while me and your father are at it, it is only proper you and your brother entertain our guests.”, he says, beseeching their boy to come closer to him and when the Giorgio finally reaches his mother (and he too, borrows into his belly), the maghrebi’ s tone becomes a little uneven once more.

“Your father and myself have many things to tell to each other now that our friends are here. And I want you to stay together.”

They both nod and with their mother’s approval, they let their curiosity run free.

They go up to their guests – the women from their dreams – and start bombarding them with questions, first of them all: “How do you come out of a dream?”

Unlike anticipated, Yusuf and Niccolò don’t talk as they prepare their dinner, as Yusuf puts on his red tunic, pulls his curly hair – barely shorter than an inch - behind his ears and adjusts Niccolò’s clothes from the crinkliness of his hunt; as they cut the onions and small peppers, as they collect the eggs from the basket and bring the goat milk to a spicy brew and start the fire while their children show Quynh and Andromákhē the toys that their parents made them, insisting with Quynh that she should show them her shadow puppet play, because Giorgio wants to become a puppeteer like the ones they saw on the streets down at the village.

Giorgio elbows his sister into the gut and becomes red with embarrassment; he is always so shy upon asking for the things he wants, but Niccolò is in no way, shape or form in the mood to either reprimand him for hitting his sister or encourage him to express his needs because Yusuf’s eyes are wide and on the verge of tears.

And no matter how many times Niccolò pleads with him to tell him what happened, Yusuf only responds with a litany of ‘it’s nothing, it’s nothing’, hiding his face from his beloved’s worried stare.

Quynh smiles at them. She promises to put on a show after dinner, when all that will have remained of the light is that coming from the flames of the fireplace, making it easier for her to work with the shadows but after they’ve eaten, the two children fall asleep with their faces pressed to their mother’s womb as the family as a whole listens to the story of how the two ladies from the land of dreams have gotten here.

A tale of monsters and tyrants to be defeated. Of mountains with titans chained to their walls and black seas. A tale that Niccolò isn’t sure his children understand is an immortal one.

After Niccolò lifts the twins up on his shoulders and brings their two little bodies upstairs where their bed lies - next to the crib they had used for them and that it’s now about to become the shelter of their newborn – after he covers them with blankets and kisses both of them goodnight, he comes back downstairs, making sure to close the woodenboard that makes a door between the stairs and the attic as tight as he can.

When he goes back, he finds the three other immortals already engaged in a spirited conversation, probably the one they had abandoned when he had come in.

“How can you know? Have you ever had children? How do you know they’re not immortal?”, Yusuf asks them furious.

“No, I’ve never have.”, Andromákhē replies sternly with a sigh-like sentence, as if she had this conversation a million times before.

“But I’ve lived long enough to know that we only dream of the ones that are like us. I dreamt of your memories, of when you were a child: I dreamed of that time you fell from the branches of the lemon tree in your family’s garden, I heard the chuckles of your sisters as they called you _akraq._ I felt your lover’s pain when his father beat him through his reminiscences, Quynh was there when you two first made love – as I’m sure you’ve seen the two of us as well – but never once have I been flooded with the memories of your children. Not even once were they the focus of my dreams. I only saw them through _your_ eyes”

“You can’t know that for sure.”, he continues, looking pleadingly at Niccolò, now more distressed then ever, his hands back on his belly.

“I’m like this, Niccolò’s like this.”, he goes on with his desperate argument, even after Niccolò doesn’t step in to help him, “Maybe you can’t see them in your dreams because it never happened before that two… two beings like us had children together. It might just be because they haven’t died just yet.”

“Do you care to find out?”, Quynh abruptly interrupts him, her voice filled with such contempt that it seems unlikely it is the same person that before was so playfully laughing with their children. “Because it is not difficult to simply go upstairs, lift their covers and plunge a knife between their rib cages. You could have done it long ago, if you truly wished to know.”

Yusuf’s mouth goes agape. Niccolò is in shock. Andromákhē purses her lips together as her eyes widen and her brows furrow, as her cheeks flush with what seems to be embarrassment on her lover’s part. At least one of them understands that that was uncalled for.

“Get out.”, Yusuf seethes in between closed teeth and falling tears, “Get out of here at once. How dare you come here and threaten our children? We’ve looked for you for centuries, we dreamed of you. How could you say these things?”

And now his hands are both back on his belly, the protective gesture of a pregnant mother.

He considers carefully his next words.

“We… we saw what you do… We tried it too… for a while. To be heroes, guardians, however you’d like to call it. But we’re happy here and… and we’re not going to let this slip away from us. And definitely not now that we’re on the way with another child. Not now that you showed us your true colors.”

He hoists himself up from where he’s sitting and – still in between tears – he goes over to the steps of their staircase, puts a foot up and turns to look into their direction, a facade of security now masking his face.

“I have come to become affectioned to you through time, through the nights we spent dreaming of each other, and I wish you no harm or ill will. But if you come here again, if you threaten my children once again… I’m going to make you wish you were mortal. We already have a family, an immortal one, go find your own.”

In less than an instant Quynh is on her feet, stalking into Yusuf’s direction with anger reeking off of her body, and as Niccolò tries to put himself in between the two of them, Andromákhē proves to be faster than him and holds her friend by her arms, whispers something into her ear that makes her reconsider and retreat.

“We will leave you alone for now.”, she says, “We do not wish you any harm too, nor would we ever want to be a part of a pregnant’s hermaphrodite distress. The Gods perfectly know how delicate your kind is.”

She licks her lips, thinks carefully about her next words.

“However”, she carries on, “I must point out to you that this ‘thing’ that you have going on will not last forever, no matter how much you want to believe the contrary. One day, your children will age. They will grow old and eventually they will die. What’s worse, with time you’ll forget them: their faces, their voices, that they even existed. I’ve lost count of the many people I’ve forgotten, of the many people I’ve loved. We both did and there is no indication this won’t happen to you too. And trust me, when it’ll happen, it’ll hurt. It shall be agonizingly painful.”

“I will never forget my children.”, Yusuf finally snaps as tears and snot stream down his face, the hand on his womb slamming heavily against the wall in a gesture of anger.

In the foreground, Niccolò can hear his children waking up, disorientated by their mother’s screams, but their distress feels like barely more than a buzzing noise in front of the scene that’s leaving him feeling drugged and unbalanced.

Then Quynh – Quynh who looked so gentle, so generous in her love – looks at them, frowns at them and starts to laugh.

And Niccolò’s eyes prickle with unshed tears.

“Do you even remember the faces of your sisters?”, she says, cruel and unyielding in the truth.

Yusuf shouts, yells at them to get out. To leave and never come back.

After that encounter, it doesn’t matter how many times Niccolò tells Yusuf that he is right, that he believes him, that nothing will happen to their children.

It doesn’t matter that he strokes Yusuf through the night, it doesn’t matter that Maryam and Giorgio run to them as soon as they hear their mother scream and try to calm him, buffled and confused - because what’s going on? Where are Andromákhē and Quynh – no, Yusuf refuses to sleep and spirals into a panic attack that convinces him he will abort this child before he even gets him to the month of birth.

And he’s right, because after a week of panic, of crying, of hysterical outburts, Yusuf’s waters break before it’s time and he dies for the first time after such a long time trying to painfully deliver their child when his hole hasn’t even stretched enough.

It is no way pretty, nor clean.

When Yusuf finally gives in and his body momentarily stops moving – and he stops pushing – the baby’s head is stuck at the hem of his hole, squeezed tightly in between Yusuf’s labia; and Niccolò isn’t able to get him out without cutting through his dead lover’s middle, going from his clitoris up to his bellybutton, as the body below him continues reshaping and repairing while Niccolò strives to deliver the baby by himself.

And when he finally does, it is too late: the baby has suffocated.

And Yusuf, a newly, freshly revived Yusuf somehow knows even before fully regaining his conscience.

He comes back from death with a gasp and eyes filled with tears.

And they sob like that, covered in placenta, sweat and blood – Yusuf laying on the rug in the woods where they had gone to to avoid their children, Niccolò holding their dead baby to their chest, keening and making noises that no human has ever made – until the rain starts and it washes all of their shame away, but not their sadness.

Then, a couple of months later, Maryam falls ill.

She becomes hot, extremely hot. Her soft skin turns into a desert, her lips dry and crack under the sheer strength of a fire that seems to be able to evaporate every droplet of water within her small frame.

Whatever they give her, whatever cure they try, it doesn’t work.

She stops eating, she refuses to drink. She calls her brother over to her sickbed and wipes away his tears, tells him to give her some of the water that comes out of his body, because she feels like she doen’t have any.

And Niccolò feels like an idiot for ever thinking of her as a cold, distant child.

In about two weeks or so, Maryam finally goes, cradled in the arms of her mother.

“I would give you all my tears if I could.”, Yusuf tells her as said rivulets fall onto the little girl’s face and paint her dehydrated cheeks (dry to the point of her skin having crinkled and died), right before she passes on, looking unbothered and quiet as she always has.

“We love you so much, _habibti_.” Are the last words that she hears before finally falling asleep.

She borrows into Yusuf as she draws her last breath.

And rivulets torn into a flood.

The evening after the day that they buried her - under her favorite tree, where she had spotted the spider she called Arya, where her and her brother used to climb against any of their parents’ orders - Niccolò finds Quynh and Andromákhē lingering at their treshold, much like Maryam and Giorgio had done the first day they met them.

Quynh looks apologetic, Andromákhē simply sad, and Niccolò has no will or strength within him left to tell them to go away.

They probably already know and Niccolò has already failed Yusuf spectacularly – he let down his children – so why shouldn’t he fail to meet his beloved’s request once more. Why shouldn’t they come in and disrupt their mourning.

In a while, they will be all he and Yusuf will have left.

When Yusuf sees them coming in, he’s playing shatranj with Giorgio, who has become hyperactive in an attempt to not think about the sister he misses so much, in an attempt to distract his parents from their pain, most of all his mother.

Upon spotting them Yusuf doesn’t say anything; he simply sighs and looks away as he allows Giorgio to run towards Quynh, so happy that his puppeteer friend came back, so happy and sad at the same time that he bursts into tears into her robes.

If only he knew what she had said about them.

But Quynh surprises Yusuf and Niccolò both.

“I am sorry about your sister.”, she says, “She was such a lovely girl.”

Niccolò falls to the ground then, keens and howls next to a sitted Yusuf, who simply stares at him. He has no tears left to cry.

But perhaps these women are not so heartless after all.

Yusuf prepares dinner for all of them - a stew of prunes, pinoli and rabbit meat - that during their otherwise silent dinner Andromákhē compliments from time to time, telling him it tastes wonderful, that he’s a marvelous cook.

Yusuf doesn’t even bother to reply.

He decides he should talk only towards the end of the night, when their two guests have talked them through their pain, when they have acknowledged it, have offered them to join the pair, but only if they wanted to.

Before Niccolò can hope to think of an answer, Yusuf agrees, says that it’s time for them to go back fighting, because they’re warriors. They’ve always been and it was useless to pretend all along.

He only asks of them to wait twenty years, just enough time for Giorgio to grow and leave them, so that they can be sure he’s safe.

They agree and set upon coming back here twenty years from now.

But it takes way less for Giorgio to leave, it takes twelve years, when he’s eighteen and he’s outgrown his parents both in height and in kindness; one evening when he tells them he should like to leave for Isfahan with the miniaturist he’s befriended that has stopped at the village for a couple of nights. That he wants to see the world.

“That’s what you want?”, Niccolò asks him, fully knowing that Giorgio – Iorgos now – isn’t stupid. He knows what’s going on, he can see his parents never aging and in between tears he says that yes, that’s what he wants. Beseeches them to take care of each other when he shan’t be here with them.

Yusuf smiles, kisses his forehead and tells him how much of a good kid he is.

That his sister would be proud.

The next day, they see him off, Niccolò adjusting for one last time the collar of his clothes, Yusuf encouraging him to be kind, but also to kick some ass when it is needed.

Iorgos chuckles and with a face filled with tears and snot, inside the back of a caravan, he waves them off, telling them how much he loves them and hearing it in return.

“I will never forget you.”, he yells one last time before turning and never looking back.

And in that moment, Yusuf and Niccolò truly believe that they won’t either.

They leave that very same afternoon, just in time for them to collect some of their belongings, to bring with them their precious album made of Yusuf’ sketches of their children, of a grown, smiling Iorgos, characterized by a sad smile that has plagued him since the death of his siblings – so that they might never look back.

They buy two horses and head north, to a place they heard it’s covered in snow all the time, where dynastic struggles are throwing the lands into mayhem.

And they are quickly joined by their two companions, whose diligence into helping others never falters too much afar from that of the married couple.

In a couple of weeks, they arrive to a town where they find a colorful wooden church, littered with domes similar to those of a mosque and crosses and icons all over the inside, that Yusuf starts to draw, starts to color when the monks that have made those icons deliver him the instruments.

It is the first time Niccolò is seeing Yusuf genuinely interested in something after a long time. And it warms his heart to a degree.

That same night, Yusuf kisses him, something they also didn’t do for a long time – Yusuf way too scared to get pregnant again, terrified of the idea of triggering _almuzahara_ anew – and let their hands roam over each other’s bodies, before knowing each other again; after so long that they feel they might die from the intensity of their bodies intertwined.

At the end, right before climax, Yusuf whispers to Niccolò’s ear “I missed you” and the former priest comes, comes so hard that he starts crying.

He missed this too. He missed his Yusuf so much.

They still have to figure things out as they go; they’re still too scared to come close to other people that are not like them but they have an eternity to learn and at least they are not alone, because they have Quynh and Andromákhē, and they have each other.

They miss their children, and look at the pictures Yusuf drew of them as often as every night, trying to etch into their mind, to carve into the flesh of their constantly rejuvenating eyes their every move, their looks, their smiles.

They don’t know if they will ever forget they have children, but at least remembering their faces feels like a good place to start to fight off what’s left behind by an impossibly long amount of time.

And, eventually, Yusuf gets pregnant again.

**Author's Note:**

> khuntha - hermaphrodite  
> maladh - shelter  
> Come faremo mai quando verrà Almuzahara? -  
> almuzahara - 'blossoming' as I've decided the heat would be called by arabic speaking populations  
> taedil - adjustment  
> masnadiero - a brigand. An ancient, spiteful noun.  
> fils de pute - son of a bitch  
> Salat-al-zuhr - Midday prayer  
> Qāhirat al-Mu'izz - the original, arabic name of Cairo meaning 'Al-Mu'izz's victory'  
> shatranj - an old form of chess that became popular during the Islamic Golden Age  
> Amore mio, Luce dei miei occhi, Yusuf, perdonami. - My love, Light of my eyes, Yusuf, forgive me.  
> keffiyeh - traditional arab headdress  
> Umm - Mother  
> Era solo un sogno, amore mio - It was just a dream, my love  
> stanco di tutto questo - tired of all of this  
> Ana uHibbuk - I love you  
> Ti amo così tanto - I love you so much  
> Baba - Dad in farsi  
> Maman - Mum in farsi  
> setar - also spelled and romanized as setaar or setâr, is an Iranian musical instrument. It is a member of the lute family.


End file.
